Avoiding the 4-index transformation in one-body reduced density matrix functional calculations for separable functionals

Abstract

One of the major computational bottlenecks in one-body reduced density matrix (1RDM) functional theory is the evaluation of approximate 1RDM functionals and their derivatives. The reason is that more advanced approximate functionals are almost exclusively defined in the natural orbital basis, so a 4-index transformation of the two-electron integrals appears to be unavoidable. I will show that this is not the case and that so-called separable functionals can be evaluated much more efficiently, i.e. only at cubic cost in the basis size. Since most approximate functionals are actually separable, this new algorithm is an important development to make 1RDM functional theory calculations feasible for large electronic systems.